The Dumbledore Hypothesis of Cognitive Aging

ABSTRACT— Cognitive aging is often characterized as a process in which two competing forces determine individual development: a genetically driven senescence process that engenders declines in mental mechanics; and an accumulation of life experience that augments cultural, pragmatic, and knowledge-based competence. The considerable variability in the level and rate of change in complex intellectual activities (e.g., language understanding) is often accounted for in terms of individual differences in abilities associated with these forces. I argue that choice in how effort is allocated may be an essential determinant of cognitive change over the life span—both directly, in the form of attentional engagement, and indirectly, as it sculpts neural substrates that give rise to component abilities.     

工作倦怠和工作投入的整合

工作投入是近期组织心理学家引入的一个新概念,这是一种重视员工职业发展的积极心理学视角的工作追求,它与传统职业健康心理学工作倦怠的整合研究,越来越引起人们的关注。积极心理学研究取向推动了整合研究的实施;能量和认同量表为整合研究提供了测量工具;员工健康的积极和消极双过程模型是整合研究的主要模型;整合研究具有重要的理论和实践价值,更有利于提高员工的身心健康。今后的整合研究应当在研究方法上增加访谈研究、个案研究和追踪研究;在研究内容上多研究积极心理因素;在研究范围上加强跨文化的比较研究;在整合途径上进一步对现有的整合模型进行改进和创新。     

Career-specific parental behaviors in adolescents’ development

Parents are major partners in helping adolescents prepare for a career choice. Although several studies have examined links between general aspects of the parent-adolescent relationship and adolescents’ career development, little research has addressed the mechanisms involved. This study aimed to validate a three-dimensional instrument for the assessment of parental career-related behaviors and to examine their associations with career exploration and decision-making difficulties. After testing the dimensional structure of the instrument, we examined the relationship between parents’ behaviors and adolescents’ career development by using data from 359 German adolescents who reported the amount of perceived parental career-related behaviors and their career exploration and decision-making difficulties. The results of structural equation modeling confirmed the hypothesized dimensional structure (support, interference, lack of engagement). While parental support associated positively with career exploration, interference and lack of engagement associated with decision-making difficulties. Furthermore, interference and lack of engagement moderated the relationship between support and exploration. Support moderated the association between interference and decision-making difficulties.     

Achievement strategies during university studies predict early career burnout and engagement

To examine whether individuals’ achievement strategies measured during university studies would have an impact on work burnout and work engagement measured 10, 14 and 17 years later, 292 university students completed the SAQ strategy questionnaire three times while at university, and the work burnout inventory three times and work engagement inventory twice during their early career. The results showed that optimism increased during university, while task-avoidance did not change. Moreover, high and increasing optimism during university predicted a high level of work engagement and low level of burnout 10, 14 and 17 years later. By contrast, a high level of task-avoidance during university predicted a low level of work engagement and high level of burnout during the early career.     

Young managers’ drive to thrive: A personal work goal approach to burnout and work engagement

This study approaches young managers’ occupational well-being through their work-related goal pursuit. The main aim was to identify content categories of personal work goals and investigate their associations with background factors, goal appraisals, burnout, and work engagement. The questionnaire data consisted of 747 young Finnish managers (23-35 years; M = 31 years) who were mostly men (85.5%). Seven work-related content categories were found on the basis of qualitative data analysis: (1) competence goals (30.5%), (2) progression goals (23.7%), (3) well-being goals (15.2%), (4) job change goals (13.7%), (5) job security goals (7.4%), (6) organizational goals (5.6%), and (7) financial goals (3.9%). ANCOVA analyses, where goal appraisals and significant background factors were controlled for, indicated that organizational goals were related to low burnout and the highest level of work engagement, whereas well-being and job change goals were related to higher burnout and lower work engagement. The study shows that the contents of young managers’ work-related goals can contribute to the understanding of individual differences in occupational well-being.     

Shared intention and personal intentions

This article explores the question: what is it for two or more people to intend to do something in the future? In a technical phrase, what is it for people to share an intention? Extending and refining earlier work of the author’s, it argues for three criteria of adequacy for an account of shared intention (the disjunction, concurrence, and obligation criteria) and offers an account that satisfies them. According to this account, in technical terms explained in the paper, people share an intention when and only when they are jointly committed to intend as a body to do such-and-such in the future. This account is compared and contrasted with the common approach that treats shared intention as a matter of personal intentions, with particular reference to the work of Michael Bratman.     

Type A behavior and work situation: associations with burnout and work engagement

The aim of the present study was to investigate Type A behavior as well as perceived work situation, and associations with burnout and work engagement. The associations in focus were investigated through hierarchical regressions in a sample (N= 329) of Swedish Information Communication Technology consultants. The findings indicated that both work situation and Type A behavior was correlated with work engagement and burnout; however, no interactions between Type A behavior and work situation were elicited. The main conclusion was that the achievement striving aspect of Type A behavior appears as "non-toxic" and is related only to work engagement. However, the irritability/impatience aspect appears to be responsible for burnout complaints among Type A individuals, possibly through negative effects of the mood itself than through perceived stress at work.     

Reason,Education and Liberalism: Family Resemblance within an Overlapping Consensus

This paper focuses on recent debates over the nature ofliberalism and its central feature of reason, both inside and outside ofeducational philosophy. Central ideas from Jonathan and Hirst contributeas do those from Rawls, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, Taylor, and Ackermantoward a less traditional contextualized and contingent view.     

Attention to repeated events in human infants (Homo sapiens): effects of joint visual attention versus stimulus change

The goal of this study was to examine the effect of joint visual attention on infants' behavior during subsequent events. Thirty-seven mother-infant (aged from 9 to 13 months) pairs were twice shown a pair of line drawing stimuli on a computer screen. For the control group, the mother never paid attention to the stimuli. For experimental group 1, the mother pointed to one stimulus in the first presentation but did not point to it in the second presentation. The infants gazed longer at the stimulus pointed to by their mothers in the first presentation. In the second presentation, during which mothers did not attend to the stimuli, infants gazed longer at the stimulus which had been pointed to by the mothers in the first presentation. In experimental group 2, one of two stimuli blinked during the first presentation but not the second presentation. Infants gazed for longer at the blinking stimulus in the first presentation, but there was no difference in looking time toward the two stimuli in the second presentation. These results suggest that joint visual attention affects infants' looking behavior during subsequent events, and that simple stimulus change does not. Accepted after revision: 2 May 2001 Electronic Publication